There's Always a Bloody Ghost
by dragonmactir
Summary: The mysterious murder of a geeky coed at UCSB catches Lassiter shorthanded and feels suspiciously Shakespearean. COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: **Not sure there are any, this is pretty much self-contained if not entirely AU, but just to be safe let's say "Through _Santabarbaratown"._

**A/N: **After that one-shot (see: **Monkey Wash Donkey Rinse**) I was left pretty much completely without inspiration (I desperately need new episodes), so I started rummaging through my library in hopes of sparking…something. I came upon my copy of _Fool, _by Christopher Moore, which led me to my copy of _King Lear_, by William Shakespeare, which led me to a quick perusal of the _Complete Collected Plays of William Shakespeare, _and Moore was right, there's always a bloody ghost. So I thought perhaps doing the Hamlet thing with Lassie might spark a thought or two percolating in the concretions of my brain, and this is what emerged. Will it go anywhere I want to go? Who knows.

* * *

**Chapter One: Poor Sweet Ophelia**

"Name of victim, Ophelia Marie King, age, nineteen. No criminal history. Shared the rent on this place with one Gena Giamatti, also age nineteen, also no criminal history, both of them sophomores at UC Santa Barbara. Giamatti came home at eight o'clock this morning after a long weekend with her parents back home in Monterey and found the vic. Morning, Detective Lassiter. Where's the better half?" the Sergeant wrapped up his briefing with a lopsided grin.

Lassiter scowled. "Detective O'Hara is working on the Appleton murder. We're spread kind of thin right now."

"That's the one that Psych is working on, right?" the Sergeant said, his grin becoming knowing. "They don't get to work together unsupervised very often. I bet they're enjoying the _alone_ time."

Lassiter removed his Ray Bans, slowly and deliberately, and fixed the Sergeant with a cold blue stare in much the same way, and with much the same effect, as an amateur lepidopterist would pin a prime specimen of _Morpho menelaus _into a shadowbox. "Are you attempting to imply something unprofessional about my partner, Sergeant?" he said in his blandest, most disinterested tone - which none but the greenest rookie doubted meant he was on the verge of being really _dangerous, _as opposed to simply his usual _grumpy._

The grin dropped off the Sergeant's face like an anvil dropped off a red stone cliff onto the head of an unsuspecting cartoon coyote. "No, sir."

"I didn't think so." He returned his focus to the task at hand. "First responding officer?"

"Patrolwoman Carter, sir. She's with the roommate, trying to get a coherent statement. Kid's pretty shook up."

"Not surprising. It's not every day you walk in on the scene of an execution," Lassiter muttered to himself. The ME hadn't yet arrived, but Lassiter was fairly certain he already knew the cause of death - a single clean shot to the back of the head at close range. Professional, clinical assassination of perhaps the least likely assassination victim he'd ever seen.

He looked at the series of muddy footprints on the white tile floor around the body and sighed. There had been a brief but violent rainstorm that morning, and he knew every ounce of mud had been tracked in by well-meaning but annoyingly superfluous paramedics and fire-rescue workers responding to the frantic 911 alert. This girl had been dead for days - emergency services were of no use to her, they only made it next to impossible to find sign of the killer's passage, including obliterating any tracks he (or she, he thought, to be fair) might have left outside. Although the storm alone had probably done that much.

A quick survey of the kitchen revealed a divot in the Formica countertop next to the sink, gouged out by the ricocheting bullet. Lassiter made a quick calculation of the angle and reached underneath the low-slung overhead cabinet and dug out the fragments of lead from the tiled wall with his penknife without having to bend down and look for it. "Thirty-eight caliber," he observed aloud, then called for an evidence bag. "I want the ME's report on that head wound as soon as he's got an accurate measure of the angle of shooting. And if Carter can get the roommate calmed down, I'd like to talk to her myself."

Lassiter dodged a crime scene photographer and gave himself a quick tour of the house. He avoided, for the moment, the little living room where he saw the female patrol officer consoling a sobbing young woman with red streaks in her blonde hair, and the bedroom whose décor suggested an occupant who would do something like that to her hair. The other bedroom was more promising, and he stopped to examine it, with an eye to finding out something about the young woman whose life had so abruptly ended.

After so many years working homicide cases, Lassiter had long since developed the ability to cover up any empathy he felt for the unfortunate victims. An effective veneer of heartlessness was an important part of the job, enabling him to eat, sleep, and maintain enough objectivity to bring justice to the offenders and some degree of peace to the families and friends. But it was just a veneer, and he had never learned to fully ignore that quick hot stab of pain, anger, and sadness he felt when he first laid eyes on a new "case," particularly when it involved a child (and his definition of "child" was growing increasingly broad as he got older, and now included young adults, particularly if they were female, probably the result of a paternal instinct his ex-wife wouldn't believe he possessed). He'd felt that pain when he first saw the girl laid out in a pool of dried blood on the kitchen floor, and he felt it again, stronger, when he took his first good look at her living quarters. Without stopping to fully assimilate the details of what he was seeing, he knew at a glance that what he was seeing were signs of nerdiness and a childish innocence.

He blinked hard, once - all he needed to fortify himself - and turned his attention to those details. Bookshelves lined the wall into which the door was set, from floor to ceiling, and stacked to capacity. The third shelf from the top was one-third books, one-third DVDs, and one-third VHS tapes. It was a neat collection but not quite Lassiter's idea of _orderly_ - a paperback copy of _The Canterbury Tales _stood in between a paperback of _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban _and a hardcover copy of _The Cat Who Came to Breakfast _by Lillian Jackson Braun, a DVD of Disney's _The Little Mermaid _stood cheek-and-jowl with a special deluxe edition of _Black Hawk Down _and a horror movie Lassiter recognized called _The Ninth Gate_, and the VHS copy of _Blazing Saddles _stood chummily in between _Amadeus_ and _My Fair Lady _while _Yellowbeard_ kept _White Christmas _and the inevitable _A Christmas Story _from making some small degree of sense out of the arrangement. Still, if her sense of organization appalled him, her taste was fairly admirable - between _Ernest Scared Stupid _and _The Tigger Movie _was a DVD copy of the Civil War miniseries _Andersonville_, a VHS of _Gettysburg_ appeared between a copy of _Fierce Creatures _and _Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas, _and a well-thumbed paperback of _Killer Angels _sat on the nightstand at the head of the bed, a blue tassel indicating the marker about three-quarters of the way through. The bed was neatly if not perfectly made, and a floppy stuffed dog lay in the middle of the handmade quilt folded up at the foot of it. The bedstead itself was made up of six long dresser drawers stacked two high, three of which were unused. Two drawers held neatly folded blouses and jeans and the third was filled with rolled white socks and folded undergarments, more sensible than sexual in style. The wall above the bed was covered with framed photographs.

Lassiter paid close scrutiny to the pictures. In one, two teenaged girls stood cheek-to-cheek while Person Unknown snapped a quick picture of them on the way out the door to a Halloween party, by the look. The one dressed as Lady Gaga looked as though she probably had red streaks in her hair these days, while the smiling girl with the straight, untreated blonde hair appeared to be dressed as the world's nicest and least-judgmental Death Eater, complete with a very authentic-looking snake-headed Lucius Malfoy wand-in-a-walking stick that now lay across the front of one of the shelves of books. Another photo showed the Death Eater girl in bright sunshine, in simple jeans and a t-shirt, hair pulled up in a pert ponytail, mounted on the back of a handsome Appaloosa. Another showed her with her arms around the neck of what looked to Lassiter like the perfect specimen of big, dumb, indestructible, wonderful Black Lab. Another showed her at a picnic dinner, waving a wing of fried chicken at the camera while she laughed, seated cross-legged with dog, older brother, mother, and father. There were numerous pictures of her with both or either parent, and many more of her with her brother. If she had a boyfriend, there was nothing to suggest it here.

The TV stand was at the foot of the bed, equipped with just a small nineteen-inch Daewoo probably older than its former owner and a DVD-VCR combo player. Lassiter checked the angle of the screen against the bed and the office chair and suspected that it saw little use, except perhaps as background noise. On top of the television was a box containing a plastic model of the Holy Grail, and when he pressed the red jewel on the front a voice gravely informed him that his mother was a hamster and his father smelt of elderberries.

The third wall was set with a pair of tall metal stands with glass shelves, on which stood a collection of knickknacks including a gigantic fossil shark's tooth around which a small herd of _My Little Ponies _congregated, and a fairly extensive set of Breyer horses, among which Lassiter recognized a model of Secretariat. There was also a boxed set of VHS copies of the first six _Star Trek _movies and a set of graphic novels marked with the Marvel logo, three of which were _X-Men_ titles and four of which were _Doctor Strange_. Two trade paperbacks titled _Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne _and _Dragon Age: The Calling _were also segregated on the collectibles shelves, and the lowest shelf of the second stand was loaded entirely with hardback copies of _Dungeons and Dragons _Dungeon Master manuals and a copy of _Dragonology_. The last wall featured an angled artist's table and a small desk, with just the one small, uncomfortable office chair to spread between them. Clipped to the artist's table was a large, unfinished colored pencil drawing of a creature with a dragon's body and a donkey's head - _a dragon ass? _Lassiter thought, with half a smile. On top of the desk was a foot-tall plaster model of a purple dragon, several chunks of amethyst geodes, and a pair of beautiful polished agate geode bookends. There was also a set of plastic human hands on a black plastic base, holding an unfinished wire of turquoise, onyx, and hematite chip beads stitched into a fairly intricate design that Lassiter took to be the start of a necklace, given the length and the onyx pendant stitched onto the middle of it. Behind that was a rhinestone-studded frame containing a picture of the girl with an elderly woman who was probably her grandmother. The long drawer contained a large Acer laptop computer, and the desk's other three drawers contained pads of drawing paper, boxes of beads, art supplies, and several _My Little Pony _coloring books, which took him aback somewhat in spite of everything. On the floor under the desk was a book bag containing several notebooks and a number of textbooks - a book on the history of modern art, another on British literature before the year 1600, an American history text and another on the history of the Greek and Roman empires.

He'd have one of the techies look at the computer and see if there was anything suggestive in there, but somehow he doubted it. A girl who appeared to have every Xanth novel ever published and somehow maintained an interest in the American Civil War and _Fraggle Rock _simultaneously seemed unlikely to inspire murderous hatred in anybody, and there was no evidence here that she was involved in anything shady. Hopefully there'd be some answers when he talked to her friends and family.

Carlton Lassiter might have the reputation of being _too_ detached from humanity, but he also had a habit of taking certain cases and making them personal. This one was going to be one of those, without question. The girl may have been a _D&D _geek and an _MLP_ freak, but overall the impression he got from the leftover trappings of her life was of a happy, brainy, pleasantly goofy kid with dreams who most definitely did _not _deserve to die.

He left the bedroom and met up with Patrol Officer Carter by the living room. "Did you get anything out of her?" he asked, with a nod to Red Streaks.

"Not much, sir," Carter said. "She gave me the number for the girl's family back home in Iowa, and the names of her teachers and some of her close acquaintances, though. She's calmed down a bit, now, if you want to talk to her."

"What's her name again?"

"Gena Giamatti."

"Got it."

He entered the living room. "Hello, Ms. Giamatti - I'm Detective Carlton Lassiter with the Santa Barbara police department, I'm leading the investigation of the murder of Ms. King. I know you're very upset right now, and doubtless very confused, but I was hoping I could ask you a few questions. I won't keep you long. Would that be all right?"

The girl turned a nightmare of a mascara-streaked face up to look at him. "O-okay," she said. Lassiter sat down on the edge of the chair across from her and pulled a notebook and pen out of the inner pocket of his jacket. "First off, I just wanted to ask you if you know what Ms. King's plans for this weekend were? Did she intend to have anyone over - a friend, perhaps a boyfriend?"

The girl shook her head. "Poppy doesn't have a boyfriend. She didn't say she was going to have anyone over. I…I invited her to Monterey with me - it was my mother's birthday - but she said she needed the weekend to finish an art history project."

Lassiter took special note of both the nickname and the use of the present tense. He hadn't put Red Streaks very high on his potential suspects list at the beginning, and already she was dropping on the Billboard charts. It wasn't real to her, yet, what had happened and what it meant.

"Do you know of anyone who might have had a reason to kill Poppy?" he asked.

"N-no!" she said, eyes wide. "Everybody _loves_ Poppy. She's a little weird but she's nice to _everybody."_

_Somebody didn't love Poppy, it would appear, _Lassiter thought. He stood up and pulled a printed business card out of his jacket pocket. "I'm going to let you get out of here now - you have someplace to go, right? - but I want you to keep thinking of everyone you and Poppy knew, anything that might have been even a little bit off about anyone. If you think of anything, anything at all, Gena, call me, okay? Any time, day or night."

On the way out of the house he paused briefly and addressed Patrol Officer Carter. "You got that list of names she gave you? I want to get started tracking some of these people down and getting statements."

"Right here, sir. How are you going to notify the next-of-kin?"

Lassiter sighed. "Painfully, I suspect."

* * *

**A/A/N: **The victim's bedroom described herein is, more or less, my own, although the book currently sitting on my nightstand is not _Killer Angels _but _Fluke; or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings, _and my copy of _Andersonville_ is actually in between a copy of _Dances With Wolves _and _The Tigger Movie _- _Ernest Scared Stupid _is just ahead of _DWW_. Even though I'm about ten years out of college I still have most of my textbooks, being one of those lucky sods who always ended up with the discontinued volumes that couldn't be sold back, so yes, the books in the book bag are mine, too, as are the _MLP_ coloring books and _D&D _manuals. Before you start to make fun of me, though, I'll point out that I left out the extensive knife and gun collection. I wave my privates in the faces of your aunties, you secondhand electric donkey-bottom biters!


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: **Not sure there are any, this is pretty much self-contained if not entirely AU, but just to be safe let's say "Through _Santabarbaratown"._

**A/N: **I'm not sure this story is working for me. I'll try and force out another chapter or two and if I don't get writer's hemorrhoids from it I'll finish it out. Otherwise I'll remove what I've got so far and try something else.

* * *

**Chapter Two: A Midsummer Night's Hallucination…?**

Even by Lassiter's standards, it was a long, hard day. There were too many active cases and not enough detectives, and without having the luxury of a partner to take some of the burden of running down witness statements and alibis he was having to grind. The worst thing was calling the parents - he didn't have to break the news to them, he contacted local police to do that, but he called them later on to express his condolences and to assure them that their daughter's murderer would not go unpunished.

It was well past midnight before he finally put the case file away, and sat there at the desk of his home office with one hand pinching the crooked bridge of his nose with his eyes squeezed tight shut, burning with fatigue and strain. He could've requisitioned the Chief for a uniformed officer to help with some of the grunt work, but if he had to pick only _one _failing it would be his disinclination to asking for help. He turned off the desk lamp and sat there in the half-dark for a long time, giving his eyes and his tired brain a rest.

That was when he heard the woman crying.

His first, perfectly reasonable (for a more-than-slightly paranoid policeman) thought was that it was Mrs. Farrow in the next unit, weeping after an altercation with her husband, although in all the time he'd lived at Prospect Gardens he'd never heard so much as a loud fart from next door, let alone an argument or sounds of spousal abuse - unless Ed's not-infrequent performances from Shakespeare counted. He even stood up and started for his door, prepared to render any necessary assistance, before he remembered that the Farrows had taken a family vacation to Maui and weren't coming back 'til next Friday. Thinking he was simply so tired that he was now hearing things, he turned back into his condo and started toward his bedroom.

A wisp of smoke hovered in the air near the door to the kitchen. Lassiter blinked, rubbed his eyes, and looked again. The wisp was still there, except now it seemed to loosely silhouette the figure of a person. He heard again the sound of crying, tinny as though he heard it through a bad speaker system.

"Ooooookay…" Lassiter muttered, and, with admirable aplomb, passed right by the sobbing apparition and went to bed. He had a lot of work to do in the morning, and he didn't have time for hallucinations.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: **Not sure there are any, this is pretty much self-contained if not entirely AU, but just to be safe let's say "Through _Santabarbaratown"._

* * *

**Chapter Three: This Too Solid Flesh**

O'Hara caught him mid-yawn over the Bullpen coffee pot the next morning.

"Rough night?" she asked.

"Long one," he said. He poured a thick shot of black police-station sludge into his favorite mug - "Real detectives do it with a chalk outline" - and knocked back half of it in a gulp without worrying about the temperature. A scalded palate would at least keep him awake for a few hours. O'Hara winced in needless sympathy, although whether it was for his obvious lack of sleep or the burnt tongue was hard to say.

"How's your case shaping up?" she asked.

"With great difficulty," he admitted. "I haven't gotten through all the friends and acquaintances yet, but so far there seems to be one over-riding theme - everyone liked her, no one can imagine who would kill her. Worst of all, I haven't found one person I don't believe yet."

O'Hara blinked. "Really? You…_believe_ them?"

He shrugged. "My vic didn't do drugs, didn't party, didn't spend a whole lot of time socializing beyond, apparently, just being generally and almost universally nice. Maybe she saw something she shouldn't have, but frankly I can't find anything or anyone in her life that looks remotely dangerous, except perhaps her fondness for Hershey's Toffee and Almond Nuggets - there were two bags stuffed in the bag of the bottom drawer of her desk. The tech services guys are still checking her computer, but I've got a funny kind of feeling they're not going to find anything except homework assignments and a lot of Google searches for Monty Python and _My Little Pony. _According to her friends she wasn't so trusting that she'd have let just anyone into the house, particularly when she was home alone, but with no sign of forced entry or struggle I'm forced to assume she was killed by someone she knew and trusted. I'm…tempted…to call in Psych on this one, to see if Spencer couldn't speed up the process a little, but he's already consulting on two cases."

"And the Appleton case is proving to be a buggaboo, and the mayor is putting pressure on the Chief to get it solved quick," O'Hara said. "I don't think Vick would be too happy with a further distraction right now - unless you think this could be the start of a string of murders."

"I only wish I knew. It _looks_ like sociopathy, but I don't have all the information yet. There may be a motive hidden somewhere in her life, or in the life of someone close to her, that I haven't found." He sighed. "Her parents are flying in tonight. I'd like to have something to show them, but I doubt I'm going to have positive progress."

O'Hara peered closely into his face, taking in the haggard lines around his eyes and mouth. "Tell me, Carlton - did you get _any_ sleep last night?"

"I…snuck a couple of hours," he answered defensively.

"Uh huh. You know, I don't think you did. You're _exhausted_, Carlton, not just tired. Why don't you get Buzz to handle your list of potentials for a few hours and try and get some sleep? He's gotten really good at the initial interview and he'd be thrilled to help you out, and after all these double-shifts you've been pulling, and with all the overtime I _know_ you put in yesterday, you deserve a break."

"I'm _fine," _he insisted, but two hours of telephone calls and two face-to-face interviews proved otherwise. He couldn't keep people's names straight, or read his own shorthand notes. Finally he was forced to concede defeat. He called upon Buzz McNab to cover as O'Hara had suggested - the patrolman really _was _getting good at the initial interview work, and would likely do passably well on the DET when he finally worked up the nerve to take it - and snuck off to the Records room for a nap. With his long legs propped up on a second chair, the unquestionably awkward accommodations were comfortable enough for him to fall asleep almost immediately.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: **Not sure there are any, this is pretty much self-contained if not entirely AU, but just to be safe let's say "Through _Santabarbaratown"._

**A/N: **For anyone living in Iowa who might be offended by Lassiter's comments about the state - I am Iowa born and raised, I say "Yup" and "You bet" and I answer the phone with a primary color, "Yellow." I also tend to pronounce my "a's" as "e's," and this slips me up on the word "particular" in perticuler. I love my home, where a deep breath of air never includes toxic levels of urban pollutants and only frequently includes hazardous levels of pesticides, herbicides, and windblown topsoil. Other than that, I'm really reaching for this fic and it is _not_ going well, but I'm too freaking stubborn to quit.

* * *

**Chapter Four: For in This Sleep of Death, What Dreams may Come**

It wasn't the sound that woke him but the _cold_. The temperature in the Records room, practically sweltering, dropped quite suddenly and he woke up shivering with his breath puffing out in faint wispy clouds before him. And that's when he noticed the sobbing.

He sighed. "This is getting kind of old, don't you think? If you have something to say, just say it. Enough with the waterworks already."

A smoky figure materialized halfway between where he sat at the back of the room and the door. "Polo," the specter said, with that bad-speaker quality and a heavy dose of reverb.

"Polo? Really? What kind of message-from-beyond is that?"

A husky sob, and the spirit was gone. So too was Lassiter's chance for a nap. He pondered the possible meanings of the word "Polo." Horse polo? Water polo? Ralph Lauren Polo? He climbed stiffly off of his makeshift cot and went to find McNab.

"McNab - anyone on that list of people I gave you named Polo?" he asked, not that he expected anything.

"Polo? Let me check - Polo, Polo…no, nobody named Polo."

"Hm. Well, it was a long shot."

"There is a _Polonius_, though," McNab said.

Lassiter grabbed the list from the big man's hand. "Geez, don't fall all over yourself telling me, eh?" He quickly scanned the list of names. "Wait a minute - Polonius _King? _The victim's _brother?"_

"Yes. Why? You think he might be our guy?"

Lassiter glared at him. "The victim's brother. Who lives in Bumfuck, Iowa. Yes, I'm sure he hopped on a plane, killed his baby sister, hopped _back_ on a plane, and is now on his way _back_ to Santa Barbara on yet another plane with his grieving parents. I can't even imagine a motive that would make that scenario plausible."

McNab shrugged, unperturbed. "Hey, you were the one asking about people named Polo. And he _does_ have a record."

"What? You mean you ran him?" Lassiter didn't know whether to be impressed or appalled.

McNab looked surprised. "No. I thought you requested it. It came to the main servers half an hour ago and Detective O'Hara had me look at it since she said you were taking a break."

"Huh. Must have been the initiative of the local yokels in Iowa. Don't know why they'd think it was important, though. What's his rap sheet look like?"

"Mostly juvie stuff, petty theft and criminal mischief. Did a few months in a place called 'Aldora,' apparently the state's correctional facility for boys, but he got picked up for Grand Theft Auto when he was eighteen and did a year at the penitentiary in Fort Dodge. I saw a National Geographic _Lockdown _special on that place - they call it 'Gladiator School.' Pretty rough for Bumfuck, Iowa."

"Yeah, a nice spot of GTA is a good way to celebrate the end of juvenile probation," Lassiter mused. "So the brother's trouble and certainly not a mental giant, doesn't make him a long-distance murderer."

"With a name like Polonius, you've got to expect him to have a few screws loose," McNab said.

"That so, Busby?" Lassiter said, not really paying attention. "Evidently Mummy and Daddy are fans of the Bard."

"Huh?"

Lassiter looked up into McNab's blank face and sighed. "Never mind, McNab. Why don't you keep working that list I gave you and shoot me that file from Iowa so I can look it over. Just in case." Even as he strode back to his desk he wondered at himself for that - taking tips from a ghost? Evidently he was in more desperate need of a full night of possibly medicinally-induced sleep than he'd thought.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: **Not sure there are any, this is pretty much self-contained if not entirely AU, but just to be safe let's say "Through _Santabarbaratown"._

* * *

**Chapter Five: A Pox O'er Both Your Houses (Yes, I Know That's not from Hamlet)**

In addition to a year in the pen for Grand Theft, Polonius Jay King also had a discarded charge of sexual assault against a former girlfriend. Lassiter stared at that notation for a long time, thinking. The potential for physical violence and a lack of regard for others, particularly when those others were female, made him look like a much better suspect despite the logistics involved. But there was still nothing to suggest that he'd go halfway across the country to murder his baby sister. Lassiter wondered if perhaps he could find something.

He grabbed his phone and dialed the number for the local authorities back in Iowa and asked for the detective he'd spoken to before, who fortunately was on duty. He asked the man to dig around a bit and find out what Polonius King had been up to for the past week or so, and then he called the Santa Barbara airport to find out whether the name was on any passenger lists arriving or departing from the city.

"There was a Polonius King on a Southwest flight from Des Moines that arrived at three forty-five this afternoon, Detective."

"I need to know whether he was in Santa Barbara _before_ today, within the last week."

"Just a moment, Sir." There was three minutes of silence. "Polonius King arrived on a Southwest flight at seven o'clock p.m. on Friday, and left on another Southwest flight at four twenty Saturday morning."

_Well, what do you know. _"Loyal customer. Thank you, very much." He hung up and sat there a little while, thinking sour thoughts. The worst part about his job, most of the time, was meeting the grieving relatives of murder victims. Worse still was telling them that _another_ beloved family member was Suspect Number One. Polonius King might be walking garbage but what parent could ever believe their children capable of murdering each other?

He checked his watch. It was now three minutes past four o'clock. He suspected that the Kings would come straight to the station without bothering to find a hotel, first, which meant they might already be at the front desk, waiting for Officer Allen to tell them where to go (once she finished talking on the phone). He wasn't going to make a good first impression, that was for sure. He stood up but as he did so, his extension rang. He answered it with a growl.

"Hey, Detective - found out something you should know, if you're interested in Polo King as a suspect. Seems Grandma King died recently, and left ten thousand dollars to her grandson, and _thirty thousand dollars_ in trust to her granddaughter."

"I'd say he probably wasn't happy to get the short end of the stick."

"You bet. And here's a further point of interest for you: if something happened to Ophelia King before she had full access to her money on her twenty-first birthday, the whole shebang would go to Polonius."

"So he killed his sister for thirty thousand dollars. Nice guy."

"He's a real piece of work, all right. You've got it all sewn up out there, then?"

"We'll take him into custody and see if we can get a confession out of him, but yes, it looks pretty cut and dried at this point. I've got motive and opportunity, the only thing I'm lacking is the weapon. I don't know how he could have taken a thirty-eight on a plane."

"You got me. I can't even get on with my _wingtips."_

Lassiter hung up, found McNab, and sent him to get an arrest warrant for Polonius King. He himself went to see whether the Kings might not already be at the station, where he could politely "request" that Polonius have a little talk with him in Interrogation Room A, and hope to God the jackass did something stupid enough to permit Lassiter to shoot him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Psych_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

**Rating: **T

**Spoilers: **Not sure there are any, this is pretty much self-contained if not entirely AU, but just to be safe let's say "Through _Santabarbaratown"._

**A/N: **The most I can say about this is, at least it's over. I hate to leave a fic unfinished but I have to say this story withered on the vine a long time ago. What's up next? Probably more sequels to_ Monkey Wash_, because I could probably write million words on any given Zevon song. I do have an idea kicking around for a Juliet-centric story that's probably another Lassiet, though, that I might play with first.

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**Chapter Six: Ophelia's Flowers**

Lassiter had faced off against a lot of wannabe tough guys in his career, although this was the first time one of them had gone as far as murdering his own baby sister. But in the end the severity of the offense made no difference to the outcome: the fool broke quickly beneath the experienced interrogator's automatic weapons-fire questioning. All he really had to do was present the testimony of the airport ticket counter and Polonius King confessed everything. He even spilled the detail about the weapon - the thirty-eight he used had been the _victim's own gun_, now at the bottom of the Pacific, a gift from their father and not even kept for self-defense. The girl had been an avid target-shooter back home, and since she hadn't had time to locate a gun range in California she hadn't even had any ammunition for the piece. "Polo" had brought that with him, hiding the loose rounds in an antique jewelry box in the middle of a suitcase full of clothes that he checked at the baggage counter, and since neither airport bothered to hand-check his luggage no one even knew he had them. Taking the fool into custody and charging him with the murder left Lassiter with no feeling of satisfaction, only the emptiness of a case that never should have crossed his desk in the first place. And more than a small degree of rage, exacerbated in particular by one comment the brother had made: "I almost thought I wasn't going to be able to do it. She had a trigger lock and I couldn't find the key for a minute." Top-shelf premium-grade number one stupid _ass hat_.

He trudged back to his desk to file the report, still searching for that sense of justice done that made the job worthwhile. O'Hara stopped him as he passed her desk. "I heard about your case. The brother, huh? Damn, that's…_really harsh."_

"Yeah. It's…a sucktastic outcome, to say the least. I feel sorry for the parents, but mostly I feel sorry for the girl. The last thing she knew on this earth was the betrayal of her own flesh and blood. Your big brother is supposed to _protect_ you, for crying out loud."

O'Hara, who had her own big brother issues since Euan's disappearance, smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. "I can't imagine anyone having a better big brother than Lauren does. Listen, the case was a bitch, but you gave that girl justice. I'm sure she can rest easy now."

Lassiter, who knew a little bit more than O'Hara about how easily Ophelia King had rested in the wake of her murder, could only hope she was right. "Hey, why don't you blow off the report until tomorrow morning and come with me for drinks? I think you could use one or three," O'Hara said.

"Yeah, why not?" Lassiter said. He followed her out of the station and to the nearby bar most often frequented by off-duty police. They ordered their drinks - Juliet a strawberry daiquiri, Lassiter an Old Fashioned - and found a back booth. Lassiter slid into his seat and took a sip of bourbon. As he did, a handful of withered flowers dropped onto the tabletop in front of him, apparently fallen off of a revoltingly non-bar décor dried flower arrangement on the wall above.

"Why in God's name did Charlie hang _that_ up there?" Juliet pondered aloud, staring at the tea shoppe wreath. Lassiter looked only at the flowers on the table. After a moment he remembered to breathe, and he slipped the flowers into the inner pocket of his jacket. He raised his glass in silent tribute to the deceased, and downed its contents in a gulp.

**FIN**


End file.
